Posts Tagged: "patents"

Vidal Tells Senate IP Subcommittee There Will Be Movement on ANPRM Proposals Soon

The Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property today held a hearing on Oversight of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), with USPTO Director Kathi Vidal as the sole witness. Only a handful of senators questioned Vidal, and only one significantly challenged her in questioning. The hearing differed considerably from the House IP Subcommittee’s Oversight Hearing in April, where Vidal was repeatedly taken to task on the Office’s then-recently issued Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM).

CAFC Affirms Mixed Ruling on Pulmonary Hypertension Drug Patent, Noting ‘Safety and Efficacy’ is for FDA

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday issued a precedential decision affirming a district court’s mixed ruling in a patent infringement case involving two patents owned by United Therapeutics on the pulmonary hypertension drug, Tyvaso.
U.S. Patent 10,716,793 and U.S. Patent 9,593,066 cover methods of treating pulmonary hypertension and pharmaceutical compositions comprising treprostinil—Tyvaso is an inhaled solution formulation of treprostinil. United Therapeutics also owns a new drug application (NDA) for Tyvaso, No. 022387.

New EPO Unitary Patent Dashboard Shows 5,000+ Requests Since Launch

The European Patent Office (EPO) today launched a dashboard on Unitary Patents, which will be updated daily and breaks down data on requests for Unitary Patents by technology field, country of origin, language of translation, proprietors’ profile and status of registration. According to an EPO press release, there have been 670 requests filed on average per week since the Unitary Patent went into effect on June 1, “demonstrating high interest in the new system.” 

Finding the Trolls: My Mission to Understand Why We Need the PTAB

I was told that elected officials count on—in fact, they need—constituent input to be effective legislators. After my patents were unjustly cancelled at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), I started the journey to do this very thing. Since January of 2022, I have visited Congress and the Senate two dozen times. I have visited over 200 offices telling my story and advocating for the “little” inventors, like me.

CAFC Says Pure Post-AIA Patents Are Not Subject to Interference Proceedings

On July 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in SNIPR Technologies Limited v. Rockefeller University reversing a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that invalidated all claims from five SNIPR patents. In reversing, the Federal Circuit found that the PTAB erroneously subjected SNIPR’s patents to interference proceedings that Congress meant to eliminate when it enacted the America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011.

Using AI to Give Inventors a Leg Up on Big Tech

In April, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) requested public input on an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM). The Request for Comments (RFC) allowed the public to voice their opinion on the proposed rules, including hundreds of real, authentic inventors. In the past, US Inventor has asked its members to use their voices and write comments for the USPTO’s requests. Typically, these requests generate at least 100 responses from USI’s members. This time, USI decided to level the playing field and give its members a chance to speak as loudly as its adversaries. We generated nearly 2,400 real comments from inventors, patent holders and concerned individuals. 

Michel Says He’s Confident Latest Eligibility Bill Will Curb Judicial Expansion of Section 101

On the evening of July 5, inventor advocacy group US Inventor hosted a webinar to discuss the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) recently introduced into the U.S. Senate by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE). The featured guest speaker was Retired U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel, who has been involved in the development of PERA’s draft legislative text and has personally supported PERA as an important step in “reviv[ing] the faltering U.S. innovation system” by abrogating the series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that greatly expanded judicial exceptions to patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

SCOTUS Issues Denials in IP Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court denied the petitions for certiorari in a number of IP cases today, including three the U.S. Solicitor General had recommended rejecting. In Genius v. Google, ML Genius Holdings (Genius) attempted to sue Google for posting song lyrics from its website in Google search results. Genius’s petition asked the High Court to answer the question of whether the Copyright Act’s preemption clause allows a business “to invoke traditional state-law contract remedies to enforce a promise not to copy and use its content?”

The Comments Keep Rolling In: More Insight on the USPTO’s ANPRM and Side-by-Side Comparison with PREVAIL Act

Public comments on the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) practices continued to be posted this week, following the June 20 deadline. The USPTO is currently processing the 14,000+ comments, many of which are duplicative, and periodically publishing them online. The Office announced the ANPRM in April. Broadly, the ANPRM is part of a strategy from the USPTO to restructure patent proceedings in an effort to curb abusive actions. A host of stakeholders, including IP law firms, academics, and advocacy groups, have weighed in on the various proposals in the rulemaking package, offering a mix of praise and criticism. We have covered several in two previous posts; here are some more.

Tillis and Coons Bill Would Eliminate all Judicial Exceptions to Patent Eligibility

As predicted by retired United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel last month, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have introduced the first of what Michel said will be multiple bills aimed at fixing the U.S. patent system. Today’s bill, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2023, would eliminate all judicially-created exceptions to U.S. patent eligibility law.

To Make the U.S. Patent System More Efficient, Let’s Obviate Obviousness

Recovering money from users of technology requires movement on the part of inventors of technology. For example, receiving compensation from those who use patented designs without permission often requires patent owners (e.g., inventors) to send cease and desist letters, file complaints in federal district court, and at times endure patent litigation to its completion. All of these movements require the inventor to possess a patent. In this manner, one way to view the patent is as a vehicle in commerce.

SCOTUS Says Retrials are Appropriate Remedy in Improper Venue Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court today delivered a ruling that flows from a trade secrets theft case, holding that “the Constitution permits the retrial of a defendant following a trial in an improper venue conducted before a jury drawn from the wrong district.” The underlying case involves a software engineer, Timothy Smith, who stole trade secrets from StrikeLines, a company that uses proprietary technology to identify private, artificial reefs that individuals construct to attract fish and then sells the coordinates. Smith, an avid fisherman, was angered by this approach as he felt StrikeLines was profiting off of the work of private citizens. He therefore figured out how to obtain StrikeLines’ data and announced on social media that he was willing to share it.

Is Judge Albright’s Role Reexpanding to Include the Austin Division?

In what may foreshadow upcoming changes to case allocations in the Western District of Texas, Judge Alan Albright of the Waco Division appears to have revived his former practice of retaining cases transferred from the Waco Division to the Austin Division following granted Section 1404 motions (i.e., convenience transfers). In his first years on the bench, Judge Albright habitually retained cases transferred out of Waco to the “sister” Austin Division on his personal docket. As one of the more notable examples, all three of the (much-covered) VLSI v. Intel litigations were transferred to Austin and retained by Judge Albright; two of the three cases were then retransferred back to Waco to allow trial to timely proceed, notwithstanding COVID-related closures in Austin.

Federal Circuit Affirms PTAB Finding that Claims for Blood Pressure Treatment are Obvious

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled in a precedential decision Wednesday that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) was correct to affirm a United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) examiner’s finding that the claims of U.S. Patent Application 15/131,442 were obvious in view of the prior art. The patent application was filed by John Couvaras and covers a method of reducing high blood pressure. The examiner rejected the claims as “not patentable because they naturally flowed from the claimed administration of the known antihypertensive agents,” specifically, a GABA-a agonist and an Angiotensin II Receptor Blocker (ARB). Couvaras conceded during prosecution that Couvaras that GABA-a agonists and ARBs “have been known as essential hypertension treatments for many, many decades” but appealed to the PTAB on the ground that the prostacyclin—a naturally occurring compound in the body that acts as an anticoagulant and vasodilator—increase was unexpected. Couvaras also argued that objective indicia overcame any existing prima facie case of obviousness.

New Deadline for USPTO’s RFC on Establishing Community Outreach and Regional Offices

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) yesterday republished its Request for Comments (RFC) on the establishment of an additional USPTO Regional Office in the southeast region and four new community outreach offices. The original RFC included a bad link for the comments form, so the Office published a new link and also extended the deadline for comments from July 11, 2023, to July 17. The RFC is in response to provisions of the Unleashing American Innovators Act of 2022 (UAIA), which was introduced in September 2021 and signed into law in December 2022, and requires the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to establish another satellite office within three years of the bill’s enactment somewhere in the Southeastern region of the nation, which the bill specifically defines as Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.